


A Lesson in Anatomy

by russomaha



Category: Jupiter Ascending (2015)
Genre: Bodyguard, Dorks in Love, F/M, Fluff, Friendship, Humor, Scheming Kiza, Some serious eye-fucking, Strippers & Strip Clubs, Yearning, bodyguard!Caine
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-01-26
Updated: 2018-01-26
Packaged: 2019-03-08 23:06:17
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,818
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13468488
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/russomaha/pseuds/russomaha
Summary: “I get it that you’re not a connoisseur of beefcakes, Caine, but would you shut up and let your girls enjoy the show?” Kiza’s getting grumpy, and a grumpy Kiza is something even Caine cowers from.





	A Lesson in Anatomy

**Author's Note:**

  * For [TheLadyRo](https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheLadyRo/gifts).



> _To celebrate the brief, but joyous encounter of our creative minds in the proverbial gutter. Thank you for the inspiration and laughs!_  
> 
> _PS Feel free to drop by again, if that strikes your fancy. Mi gutter es tu gutter._

As they enter their establishment of choice for the night – _Kiza’s_ choice, to be precise, not _theirs_ – Jupiter keeps casting furtive glances around, as if expecting some hidden danger to spring upon her from a dark corner. How could she let Kiza ambush her and lure her to this place? When it comes to entertainment, her friend’s treacherous cunning will never cease to amaze the queen.

Yet there’s no real danger to be found here, sadly, otherwise her loyal bodyguard would have spotted it before they even came in and spirited her away, saving her from the looming prospect of cringe-worthy embarrassment. Caine is invariably good at saving her from kidnapping or assassination attempts, just as invariably failing to save her from the evil machinations of their mutual best friend.

Having followed Kiza to their table, Jupiter accidentally plants her palm on the tabletop while seating herself on the chair Caine has pulled out for her. She feels an immediate urge to fish the wet wipes out of her purse and clean her fingers, – _she’s so not touching anything else tonight, not even through the medium of paper money!_ With effort, she tramps down the sudden surge of germophobia.

It not like her squeamishness is founded: the club looks squeaky-clean, and a thin greasy film covering everything in sight is just a figment of her imagination; she knows that. Kiza wouldn’t have dragged her here if it wasn’t a _classy_ establishment.

Besides, it’s not like she’s going to put any actual food in her mouth with that hand and she can handle holding a glass with it.

Gods, she will actually have to drink from that glass. At least pretend to.

She can pretend to have fun for an hour or two, she owes this much to Kiza. Queen’s life is a busy one, and she doesn’t get to spend much time with her best friend, no matter how much she wants to. So when she finally managed to make some time for Kiza, the girl was literally bursting with excitement, having thought of such an imaginative idea to surprise her.

Imaginative indeed.

When Kiza told her that she had a mighty surprise for Mighty Majesty, Jupiter was immediately alarmed, but she didn’t expect to be corralled into a freaking strip club. Surprises don’t get any mightier than _this_.

As apprehensive as she feels, Caine looks even more so. Bound to her side by the call of duty, he had no choice but to come with. He doesn’t appear too pleased about it, though. The lycantant seems tense, on edge; Jupiter can practically feel the discomfort radiating from him. Maybe this whole type of entertainment grosses him out? She tries to imagine how it would feel for her to watch a show with girl strippers, but can’t find anything offensive in the envisaged experience. Tastes differ, though.

“Caine, if this makes you uncomfortable,” she offers, “we could leave.”

He gives her this look as if she’s an alien. Well, for him, she _is_. And it’s not like aliens are anything out of the ordinary in the ‘verse, either; she really needs to adjust her similia.

All right, Caine looks at her like she is _weird,_ – he still can’t get used to this reality where Queen cares about her splice bodyguard's comfort. Then he proceeds to shake his head resolutely.

“No, it’s not…” he lets out a long exhale, obviously trying to word his answer in the most accurate manner, as he always does. “It’s just the smells here are so condensed, so intense… It’s a sensory overload for me, much like a human’s experiencing too many flickering visuals or excessive noise. Like watching the Marvel logo or attending a heavy metal concert. I will adjust to it soon enough, though.”

“Still, we can leave any time, okay?”

“No we can’t!” Kiza declares authoritatively, – leave it to her to contradict her _Queen_. “We haven’t seen the goods yet!”

Jupiter can’t help but flinch at her wording. She’s still trying to cope with the fact that in this advance universe she lives in now, splices get mass-produced, sold and bought, and such a practice is considered a common and respectable business. She has a problem with referring to any sentient beings – or the physical attributes thereof – as “goods”.

She knows, though, that Kiza didn’t mean it like that, so she doesn’t say anything. Still, the idea of _people_ being paid so others – so _she_ – could objectify them, ogle their bodies like inanimate  _things_ , doesn’t sit well with her.

She might need that drink after all.

As a scantily clad, ridiculously muscled man comes onto the stage to greet the audience – looking more an anatomy teaching model than a real human being – excited cheers erupt all around them. Jupiter glances around, puzzled. The audience, unsurprisingly, consists mostly of girls and women. Who are all these people? What’s brought them to the strip club? Why are they so much more excited to be here than she is?

Must be all those rippling muscles.

“Hell yeah,” Kiza cheers, “let’s get this party started!” Seeing her friend down half her glass in one go, Jupiter bravely starts sipping on hers.

Caine eyes the guy on the stage apprehensively and leans in to whisper his verdict to Kiza, “All that muscle mass is excessive. It’s just – _decorative_ ,” he hisses the word out, dismay evident in his voice.

“It sure is!” Kiza nods enthusiastically. “It’s a girl thing, Caine,” she blindly gropes for his hand, without taking her eyes off the stage, and pats it comfortingly, “you wouldn’t get it. Ooh, I didn’t know one can do _that_ with that!”

“It’s just…” Caine mutters, clearly peeved, “It’s _impractical_ to build your body up that much. It increases the nutrient intake, impedes your agility and wouldn’t do much for your ability to fight.”

Jupiter silently agrees with him on that assessment, except the agility part. She didn’t know one can do that with _that_ , either.

Caine is right, though. It wouldn’t do much for fighting skills. She can’t imagine anyone fighting with that particular part of their body.

Then again, what does she know? This new unknown universe she found herself in never ceases to amaze her. She’s learning not to make assumptions. Considering how thoroughly thought-out and deliberate lycantant genomgineering was, maybe they actually _could_.

_Caine_ could.

All right, she must stop thinking about it, _pronto_. It’s disturbing. She sets one foot into this wanton lair of wantonness  – and bam! – she’s a creep now. Gods.

Meanwhile Kiza’s busy grumbling at the lycantant in question, “I get it that you’re not a connoisseur of beefcakes, Caine, but would you shut up and let your girls enjoy the show?” She’s getting grumpy, and a grumpy Kiza is something even Caine cowers from.

So he shuts up.

As another dancer enters the stage and starts to unbutton the shirt of his policeman outfit – following the flow of music, excruciatingly slo-o-owly, – she hears Caine shifting on his chair.

The shirt goes off – and she holds her breath, prepared to cringe at the sight – revealing another brawny chest. Huh, that hasn’t even been painful to watch. Thank gods, all of these performers seem to understand that a hairy chest does not a sexy body make.

At that very moment, a silent, doleful huff interrupts Jupiter’s musings, the warm current of the exhale washing over her ear in an intangible caress. Caine determinedly keeps his mouth shut, but he’s being very _pronounced_ about it.

Kiza side-eyes her big buddy dangerously, but gets promptly distracted by the belt being unbuckled and a hand running teasingly along the fly. Why doesn’t the guy just get the pants off and be done with it already?! This is getting seriously distracting.

As Jupiter absently finishes off her second drink for the night, Caine lets out another deep, dramatic, forlorn sigh, akin to a St Bernard whose belly you’ve tragically forgotten to rub for whole five minutes.

Her heart goes out to him as she coos internally. Kiza’s expression, on the contrary, turns positively murderous at that, so Jupiter decides it’s time to say something just to diffuse the escalating tension.

“Say” would be meaning “blurt”. Unthinkingly.

“Caine, stop pining, please, there’s no need to be jealous. You look more dashing fully dressed than all of those stark naked, put together,” she divulges, gesturing at the stage, with much less humour and much more sincerity than she intended to. The ratio should have been inverse, damn it!

That earns her a knowing smirk from Kiza, and Caine –

Caine goes completely silent.

Entirely, utterly, abso-freaking-lutely silent: no huffs, no sighs, no nothing.

She briefly wonders if he’s still breathing at all.

Briefly, because she tries her best to distract herself from the aching _truth_ of what she’s just revealed – the feeling behind the words, the naked yearning, rooted deep within her very bones – turning to stare at the stage.

Come on, try thinking nice, diverting, _chaste_ thoughts. How the hell has that guy just torn his pants off in one split-second movement? They must have velcro in the side seams, or something.

There you go. _Good queen_.

She recalls the sheer, stifling mortification she felt that one time when she made Caine strip – by accident, of course, – no, really! – and grows hot all over again, just like she did back then. Yet all these naked bodies – well-muscled, overly so, and glistening in the cleverly adjusted, almost intimate lighting – don’t do anything that intense to her. Not even close. Sure, they are aesthetically pleasing to look at, although she does cringe at some of their most provocative movements.

It’s not about what they do, but _how_ they do it. They lack the grace and inner dignity Caine has, which she could see in him even when he was unclothing himself with sharp, precise, tightly-controlled motions and the general air of utter composure.

As for these dancers, well… They certainly have great bodies to show off. Still, all their lush physique seems just as overblown to her as it does to Caine. She knows she’s supposed to admire the abs, behold the biceps, covet the calves, drool at the delts, go gaga over the glutes… And she appreciates them, she does – at the very least she acknowledges the hard work that has been put into making them as defined and sculptured as they are – they just _don’t do it for her_.

Her gaze, as if by its own volition, drifts away from the stage to steal a glance at Caine’s profile. Oh, that gorgeous, mesmerizing profile… His eyes, as usual, are busy scanning the crowd for any suspicious disturbances, anything that doesn’t _feel_ right, making sure she’s safe at every moment in time, trying to look everywhere at once, – while her eyes linger, unable to part with the face she has grown so fond of. They drink Caine in, sliding up the column of his neck, caressing the silhouette of his throat, studying the angle of his jawline, memorizing the shape of his ear –

– And meeting Caine’s inquisitive gaze. It seems like he’s been looking at her for a while now, an eyebrow raised in a silent question.

_Caught with her hand in the cookie jar_ , that’s what she is. But boy, what a glorious cookie jar! And in reality her hand is nowhere near it, sadly.

Scraping up her meagre self-control – she really shouldn’t have drunk so much – Jupiter gives Caine an evasive smile accompanied by a noncommittal wiggle of her fingers and resolutely turns to watch the performance.

While she was distracted, things have gotten increasingly heated on the stage: an almost nude guy – with the exception of that ridiculous contraption the performers wear to cover their most private bits – is undulating over a random girl from the audience, spread beneath him like a sacrificial offering. There is a surprising elegance to his smooth, fluid movements. Real sex would never look anything near that aesthetic.

Some performers have spread to do their table dances, which mostly consisted of “I’ll shove my bulge in your face till you snort your champagne out of your nose” routine. Astonishingly, their unfortunate victims looked inordinately pleased with proceedings, squealing and laughing with delight.

One stripper is coming over to their table, drawn in, as Jupiter presumes, not so much by Kiza’s commanding whistle, but by an impressive wad of bills the girl is waving at him. Apparently, she has no qualms about spending the dough from the royal coffers on having a spectacular ass being shaken temptingly at her.

Well, it’s not like Queen is strapped for cash.

As the dancer gets closer, Jupiter can feel Caine tense behind her, his alarm tangible in the air between them. Never in her life Jupiter has been more grateful for his natural talent to glower anyone away from approaching her. But the guy just grins and winks – freaking _winks_ – at her anxious guard, proceeding to occupy himself completely with Kiza and her cash.

Jupiter smiles at her friend’s obvious enjoyment, yet she can’t help but wince inwardly at the thought of someone having to resort to making their living that way. She can’t imagine stepping onto that stage and getting naked while a bunch of strangers leer and wolf-whistle at her, let alone actually interact with them like this, touching them, letting _them_ touch _her_. She would never have the inner strength to overcome her embarrassment, her utter mortification, her _fear_. How can these dancers do it? It’s mind-boggling.

And then it hits her.

They’re being so fucking _brave_.

And yes, it’s not Caine’s sombre I-will-die-on-duty-without-batting-an-eye type of fearlessness, but I-will-hump-a-stranger’s-face-without-losing-a-shit-eating-grin one.

But still, it’s _courage_.

She can admire it.

She can _respect_ it.

And just like that, they’re _men_ for her, _courageous_ men, and nothing turns a woman on more than a man of valour. It doesn’t matter how they look anymore, or what they do, but what stands behind their actions.

And Jupiter opens, letting the charged, galvanized atmosphere flood through her, filling her with the excitement of those around. The audience is being unreservedly generous with their appreciation and cheers, as well as their money. The girls are beaming and giggling and – happy. And - just like everyone else – she is cheering, applauding, waving cash – because it’s cash the performers want and they fucking deserve it; she riding the electric wave of this delicious sparkling thrill and laughing, an easy, overwhelming, _innocent_ joy bubbling within her.

This night is fucking awesome.

She’s so thanking Kiza later.

–––

“We should do this more often,” Caine enthuses as they leave the establishment, carefully supporting slightly inebriated Jupiter with a warm, steadying hand on the small of her back.

Well, she certainly didn’t expect the initiative to come from _him_. From Kiza, yes, by all accounts, from herself even, but from _Caine?!_

Apparently, her astonishment shows on her face as he feels obliged to explain, “Your Majesty have enjoyed yourself.”

It doesn’t come off judgmental or accusing, he’s just stating his observations in that calm, matter-of-fact manner of his that she appreciates so much. What she doesn’t appreciate, though, is the implications of what he’s just said. It’s not hard to guess _how_ exactly he has arrived to that particular conclusion.

Damn that nose! Seriously. No privacy whatsoever. She doesn’t get to admire some masculine beauty in peace, without someone – _someone_ – sniffing out the effects it has on her. She’s a human being, after all, she’s allowed to have normal human reactions. Gods.

“Next time we go,” she grits out, mortified and angry with her guard for having effectively killed her buzz, “I’ll have someone else to accompany us.” – Someone _human_. – “It won’t do to make you _suffer_ through all those _intense smells_ again.”

“It’s all right,” he replies amicably, “I’ve come to enjoy them in the end.”

That sends Kiza into a fit giggles.

“Guess what, Caine? You’ve just told our Mighty Majesty that you got off on the scent of her lady-boner,” the menace quips, still snickering.

It takes some time for that remark to register. Jupiter can see the muscles of Caine’s throat contract spastically, as if he is attempting to swallow and failing; she can’t help a surge of vengeful satisfaction she experiences at the gagging, gurgling sound that finally erupts from his mouth.

“I didn’t mean it like that,” he chokes out, “that would be a _lèse_ _-majesté!_ ” He turns to look at Jupiter, eyes wide, his expression a curious mix of aghast and lost. “You know I didn’t mean it like that, don’t you, Your Majesty?”

Feeling sufficiently avenged and therefore much more magnanimous than just a minute ago, she beams at her horrified guard and says, patting his shoulder soothingly, “Of course I know. You’re a decent guy, Caine. Way too decent for anything like that.”

_Unfortunately._

 

that one time when she made Caine strip See [Constellations](http://archiveofourown.org/works/13279011) for that.

**Author's Note:**

>  _Opposite to the highly probable assumption, this story wasn’t inspired by Magic Mike movies (although I had to re-watch them, strictly for research purposes, of course))), but by the brilliant British film **Full Monty** starring amazingly talented **Robert Carlyle** (aka Rumpelstiltskin from Once Upon a Time TV series). Check it out, you won’t regret it._  
> 
> _There is a great stage production of the same story called **Ladies’ Night**. If you ever get a chance to see it, don’t miss it. The actors are charismatic like hell, and the atmosphere there is something else._
> 
> _Please, note that I do not demean strip-clubs, their hygienic conditions or – gods forbid! - their performers. I’m sure they are hard working people doing their jobs, bringing much joy – and hotness – into this world. And this world can definitely use more joy._  
> 
> _And hotness._


End file.
